Thanks for the reply!!! I can pick-up a "working" unit in my area for about the same prices you quoted for parts and/or labor. I was thinking of just swapping out the PSU, getting what I need off the DVR, and then moving-on to an upgrade or switching services.

I like what i've read about upgrading the hard drive, but the more I read the more confusing it gets. I'm sure it's pretty straight forward, but their doesn't seem to be one source that has a step-by-step outline for a n00b like me.

Before swapping the PSU, I would power up the "working" unit and perform the same voltage checks.

Thanks for the reply!!! I can pick-up a "working" unit in my area for about the same prices you quoted for parts and/or labor. I was thinking of just swapping out the PSU, getting what I need off the DVR, and then moving-on to an upgrade or switching services.

I like what i've read about upgrading the hard drive, but the more I read the more confusing it gets. I'm sure it's pretty straight forward, but their doesn't seem to be one source that has a step-by-step outline for a n00b like me.

Well I picked up a "working" unit off of craigs for $10. Went and checked the voltage of the donor unit and it was at 12.07 dvc with no bulging capaitors. Swapped it over to my unit and hooked it up to the tv. After several tense minutes of waiting to see if it will get past the "Welcome" screen it does. Takes a while to do its song and dance aquiring sat signal, etc. but I am back in business watching tv...for about 20 minutes. The picture starts to get pixelated, choppy, and the remote won't do it's thing. The button on the unit does nothing as well when pressed. After a while the unit goes to a black screen and reboots only to repeat the entire process again.

I guess the HD is toast. Can any info be salvaged off the OG HD? I'm surprised the HD lasted as long as it did - almost 8yrs!!! I think I'll swap over the HD in the donor unit to at least get me back to watching tv (what problems might I encounter since my understanding is that each access card is tied to an individual unit/HD)?

Can anyone point me towards a straight forward reference for making an image of the old HD and putting in a new larger 1TB HD.

keeping in mind that it's probably been a year or more since spike updated anything there, and that doesn't mean that some parts might be more out of date than that.

After you've read til your eyeballs fall out, come back here and say which model TiVo we're talking about and exactly what you want to do with it hard-drive-wise, including drive sizes involved, and your reading will make our advice comprehensible.

Dang, how are you guys finding OLED S3s so easily? I'd like one for the PS.. (yes I realize the new PS could also go bad, but mostly I'm trying to revive it.. since I'd ALSO try to revive the DRIVE that died on me too -- it spins, but I'm guessing the controller got fried.. so I want to try to someday find the same drive on eBay, replace controller.. and hopefully restore my ~1TB of recordings.. then sell the lifetime S3 and use the proceeds for an Elite..)

Series 3 is stuck in the "powering up" loop. Ejected CableCard #2 and it booted normally, so I'm assuming it's the power supply. No experience with soldering electronics, but I'm going to give it a try. Any recommendations on a basic soldering gun/iron to do the job(preferably from Amazon)?

I probably won't do it right away, since it seems to be working fine with one tuner, but this is the TiVo that makes me eligible for MSD and I'd like to keep it running.

Series 3 is stuck in the "powering up" loop. Ejected CableCard #2 and it booted normally, so I'm assuming it's the power supply. No experience with soldering electronics, but I'm going to give it a try. Any recommendations on a basic soldering gun/iron to do the job(preferably from Amazon)?

I probably won't do it right away, since it seems to be working fine with one tuner, but this is the TiVo that makes me eligible for MSD and I'd like to keep it running.

Use the gun tip to heat the area on the bottom of the power supply circuit board where the capacitor lead* is soldered, and feed in a little of that Kester solder--as it melts it helps melt the old solder.

"Rock" the cap a little to pull the lead out from the molten solder, then melt the solder on the other lead, and rock that side, and work back and forth.

Or use solder wick or a solder sucker.

Be sure to get Low-ESR, 105 degree rated replacement caps of the same uF (microFarad) rating and at least the same voltage rating, or, if necessary, the next step up, voltage wise.

When installing the new cap(s), be sure to get the polarity the same (use the careful and complete notes you made when you took out the old one).

There's usually a stripe down the side nearest the negative (-) lead on caps with both leads coming out the bottom (known as radial leads--if it's a tube with a lead coming out of each end, that's axial lead and often they're marked with a + sign at the positive end instead, but the TiVo supplies all use radial lead caps)

*pronounced leed, it's one of two "wires" coming out of the bottom of the capacitor

EDIT: The sooner you take the lid off and eyeball that supply to see if you see any bad caps, the better. They aren't going to heal themselves and if things get bad enough you're talking possible data corruption.

And when removing the supply, in addition to the #10 Torx bit screws you see inside the chassis, there's a dark colored #8 or #9 Torx bit screw that goes into the top of the AC input socket from the outside on the back panel.

So far on the original OLED S3, the 648, it seems equally divided between C401 and C402 as a pair, or C701, as to what shows bulging.

So far in general, on S2 and S3 power supplies, it seems to be caps on either the +5V output or the +12V output that go bad.

I mentioned the C504 because it's on the +5V line, and the C702 because it's on the +12V, although I have not personally seen any evidence of either of those 2 failing.

I have just the one recently acquired 648 supply and it seems healthy so far, so I'm going on my experiences with 2 S2 supplies and an S3 HD (652) supply, in all of which I had to replace caps, and on the reports and photos from others.

You know the part of the handle right behind the flare where you hold it?

Eventually you'll wish you had some sort of insulation and padding around that if you're using that iron for an extended period of time.

If you use it on the power supply board, especially the negative capacitor leads that are soldered to the relatively large ground plane (wide expanse of copper which will be dissapating the heat you're trying to apply), then you'll be holding it a long time.

If you're determined to go with a Weller Marksman iron, at least get the 40 Watt version.

Looks like I too have this problem now on my old S3-HD that's in the bedroom. Here are the details:

1. One night I noticed that the green light was flashing. I turned the TV on and there was no signal coming out of the TiVo and the box was unresponsive to the remote.

2. I powercycled and the box came back, but just traversing the menus was kind of slow and it appeared to occasionally freeze, as opposed to just hanging, as the background animation would occasionally stop.

3. After a while, it spontaneously rebooted and at that point was just in a reboot loop. It would say "welcome! powering up", then it would get to "Almost There!", then after about 5 minutes it would reboot again.

4. Multiple powercycles yielded the same boot loop results, even after letting the box sit unpowered for a couple of days.

5. I tried to kickstart, but according to the instructions "as the TiVo box restarts, all four LED lights on the front bezel of the box will be on at the same time", and I'm supposed to wait for them to go out. At no time were the other lights on. I even tried holding pause for the whole time, but the yellow light never came on.

6. I tried popping the second cablecard out, but not only did that not let the box boot up, it now boot loops faster, rebooting before it even gets to "Almost There".

Maybe it's power supply, maybe it's the drive. Either way, I'm probably just going to replace the box rather than fix it... especially since upgrading to a Premiere will let me stream recordings from the living room Premiere to the new bedroom Premiere (something I couldn't do with the S3 with copy-protected recordings, which with my cable provider is all recordings except ones from broadcast channels).

Too bad this didn't happen a couple of months ago, when TiVo had a sale going.

What I want to know is: is there is any way I can salvage the recordings currently on the S3?

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